Joe Shuster Awards Go West in 2011

From coast to coast, Canada is home to many of the comic book industry’s top talents, and the JOE SHUSTER AWARDS are a way of recognizing and celebrating their achievements. Since it was established in 2004, the Joe Shuster Award program has been Canada’s national awards program for recognizing the outstanding achievements of Canadian comic book creators, publishers and retailers. The juried awards are named after pioneering Toronto-born artist Joe Shuster who, along with writer Jerry Siegel, created the iconic super-powered hero, Superman.

Between October and January 2011, the nominees for the 7th Annual Joe Shuster Awards will be selected from master lists of eligible works originally published in English and/or French during the 2010 calendar year. Canadian citizens living at home or abroad, as well as permanent residents are eligible for consideration. Once the lists of nominees are finalized and announced, the nominated creators will have their work reviewed by juries who will determine the winners.

The winners of the 7th Annual Joe Shuster Awards will be announced at a public ceremony on the evening of Saturday, June 18th, 2011 at the CALGARY COMIC & ENTERTAINMENT EXPO http://calgaryexpo.com/ at the BMO Round-Up Centre in Calgary, Alberta.

“We are pleased and honoured to be presenting the 2011 Joe Shuster Awards at the Calgary Expo,” reports Awards Association Co-Founder and current Executive Director Kevin Boyd. “As a truly national awards program we know it is important to connect with comic markets across Canada, and it has been a longstanding goal of this organization to present the awards outside of Toronto in order to do just that. As the Canadian comic book industry award – with a large pool of participants in every province – our intention is to share these awards with the creators, retailers and publishers at events like the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo — a great showcase for Western Canada’s strong comics and sequential arts community and a draw for creators from across the country. We can’t thank the organizers of this event enough for welcoming us to the Round-Up Centre for their 2011 event.”

More news about the ceremony will be announced when the nominations are released in February 2011.